


this is not george and martha

by 01nm



Series: earth-p95 has dropped you a girlfriend. date her? [Y/N] [1]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Autistic Peter Parker, Blood and Violence, Demi-Woman Character, Dimension Travel, Disabled Characters, F/F, Female Peter Parker, First Meetings, Intersex Character, Nonbinary Foggy Nelson, Old Man Wade, Trans Female Character, married tony/rhodey/pepper, this is not genderbend or cisswap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-10-14 22:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10545200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/01nm/pseuds/01nm
Summary: One unassuming day, a second Deadpool drops out of the sky.Penny, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Woman, just so happens to be friends with the first one.





	1. old man deadpool

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT 2/14/2018: Did y'all know that this fic predicted the [Kim Possible Live Action Reboot? ](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/live-action-kim-movie-works-at-disney-channel-1082695) Well, now you do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *violence, blood/gore/body horror of the deadpool variety

 

The alarm clock on the bedside table rings at its preset time, as it should.

 

The woman, previously curled up on the bed into a shape not unlike a sleeping cat, stands up in a flash and smashes the poor thing into several pieces, which clatter all over the floor and walls.

 

She falls right back into bed.

 

Ringing (well, technically not anymore) silence.

 

Moments later, a cell phone begins to vibrate obnoxiously from somewhere within the tangled sheets and limbs.

 

The clock-destroyer groans very loudly and smacks her leg around until she hits the device, utilizing her spider-sticky foot in order to capture it and toss it up near her head. She uses her nose to poke the green answer call button.

 

“I am five steps away from your door, and yet I’m already hearing you wrecking shit.” A rough voice speaks on the other end. “Don’t tell me you’ve started the party without me, Webs.”

 

“Did anybody see you come up?” Penny asks without preamble. It’s only 6:45 a.m – maybe she got lucky today.

 

“You bet your sweet bippy they did.”

 

...Nevermind.

 

Penny groans again, squeezing her eyes shut and grabbing the phone with one hand so that she can carry it with her as she slowly rolls herself off the bed. Her comforter comes with her. She doesn’t bother to fix it. “Hurry up and come in, Wade. My landlord has a camera set up in the hallway and he likes to ‘coincidentally’ catch people for a ‘chat’ if he’s watching the feed.”

 

A chortle, and then Wade hangs up. The sound of keys jangling outside her door sends Penny to her feet, abruptly realizing that she’s got no shirt on because she forgot to re-dress after a _swinging patrol_ last night.

 

‘Swinging patrol’; haha, get it?

 

Because… because she’s Spider-Woman?

 

...Well, _she_ thought it was funny.

 

Penny sniffs a red shirt with some cafe’s name on the front, confused at its existence. She bets Aunt May left it here, because it looks a little bit too short and little bit not loose enough for what she usually wears.

 

Deadpool bangs open her apartment door with a _“Where’s my sweet, smelly girl!?”_ like she’s some kind of pet or something.

 

She shrugs and pulls the shirt on.

 

She might be overly comfortable with Wade at this point in time, what with having known each other since Penny had still been in highschool (and oh – what a terrible, terrifying, and embarrassing time to know Penny), but she’s not _that_ comfortable with him.

 

That’d be like having your _dad_ walk in on you while you’re just getting out of the shower – and neither party wants that to happen.

 

“I brought you some brownies,” Wade tells her as she approaches him. He brandishes an empty plate.

 

Or, maybe he’s more like a kinda crazy grandpa...

 

Penny blinks a couple of times, then sighs. “Stop feeding my neighbors – they think you’re some old creep trying to woo me and the entire apartment complex with baked goods.”

 

“I _am_ some old creep trying to woo you with baked goods.” Deadpool dumps the plate in her sink. Penny’s okay with this, because there’s an 85% chance he’ll forget it there, and then Penny will have a new plate.

 

“Woo me into what, exactly?” Penny hip-bumps the fridge door closed, drinking straight from the OJ carton because she _lives_ here and she’s _allowed to do that now, Aunt May!_ “And I’m sorry for calling you a creep. That was mean and not very true.” _Anymore,_ but she holds that little opinion to herself.

 

Deadpool does that thing where he gets visibly, emotionally constipated when faced with anything genuine and nice.

 

He crosses his bare red arms. “Yea, well – _you’re_ not wearing any _pants._ So there!” He spits out like this is some kind of argument.

 

Penny looks down. She wiggles her toes.

 

So it turns out she isn’t wearing any pants.

 

“No, Firelord Ozai,” Penny recites, pointing at Wade, _“_ _you’re_ not wearing any pants.”

 

Then she scampers off to go find some goshdarn pants.

 

Deadpool looks down at his own legs, realizes that he is indeed still wearing pants, a fact that has not changed since he got dressed this morning, and laughs. And then abruptly stops. “That show came out before you were even born. _I’m so old.”_

 

Penny shrugs noncommittally, shoving her legs into some black shorts (may or may not be Harry’s, but she stole these ones on purpose, as opposed to accidentally acquiring after a sleepover) and decides to stay out of that one. She can’t help him if he’s got _immortal_ _lity_ _issues_ and… and stuff like that.

 

Y’know – whatever problems those people who’ve nearly lived for 100 years and are slowly starting to realize that yes, yes they really are immortal, deal with.

 

She can try and distract him though, before he thinks himself into a funk.

 

“How about, since you gave all of my brownies away, you make me chocolate chip pancakes instead?” Penny offers, quite deviously. She never claimed that she wouldn’t try and benefit from distracting him. She’s not 100% Good, Sweet, and Honey. She’s a little bit Spice, too.

 

Wade sniffs deeply and uncrosses his arms, then crosses them again. He might’ve forgotten that he just uncrossed them, or he did it on purpose. She never can fully tell. “Uh-uh, little spider – you’re all grown up and shit. You can’t keep tricking me into feeding you my wonderful breakfast stuffs every time I come over like you’re some pitiful teenage orphan protagonist who lives alone for illegally thought out _wangst_ reasons.”

 

Spider-Woman-in-civvies hums, walking over to her bed and checking the time. Not on her clock – that’s literally in pieces everywhere – but on her phone. She’s got a few texts from Aunt May and one from Dr. Banner. “No… But you _did_ call me ‘basically twelve’ the other day, so I’d technically be a pre-teen protagonist, right? And that’s even _more_ pitiful and worthy of your ‘wonderful breakfast stuffs’ isn’t it?”

 

The ex-merc takes some time to breathe loudly, apparently thinking about it.

 

Then he slumps away dramatically, grumbling to himself, and goes to make her some breakfast.

 

Heck yea, pancakes.

 

Penny wanders off to the bathroom to go clean up before she has to head to work. Even though she’s not home alone right now, she only pulls the bathroom door mostly closed, just in case Deadpool yells for something or forgets where he is or whose house he’s in or what day is it or something jarring like that. It’s happened a couple of times. She doesn’t really mind helping him, though, so peeing with the door open it is.

 

She almost knocks over her forgetfully-open bottle of tea tree face wash (given to her by her ex-girlfriend Gwen, because they’re still great buddies and Gwen knows a lot about skin care), which would be awful, because she needs that to try and treat the hormonal acne popping up all over her cheeks and chin right now from her new dosage of HRT.

 

Spider-Woman squints into the mirror, trying to distinguish her acne from her freckles on her ‘my skin is angry with me right now’ red, soapy face.

 

She shrugs and just splashes foamy water all over, inarticulate as she always is.

 

Which is probably how she gets a bunch in her eyes.

 

“Ow,” Penny blandly announces to the bathroom’s four, eggshell white walls, “ow, ow -” Big sigh, _“ow._ I am smart. I make good decisions.” A hiss at the stinging feeling as she clumsily attempts to flush her eyes with only the expertise of her tragically short sink and her hands. “I _love_ taking care of myself and my skin. Ow. This was a good! Decision… Ow, _ow_ owowowowow...”

 

“I hear the sounds of humiliation and pain!” Wade announces happily from right outside the bathroom door, nearly startling Penny into smacking her forehead against the sink counter. “And I would like to volunteer to participa- oh, did you get soap in your eye again? Is that it? _Lame.”_

 

Penny sputters as a towel is unexpectedly pressed into her sopping face and is mushed around none too gently. She’s assuming that the hand pressing into the back of her head (to keep her from escaping, probably) is Wade’s, because hers are too busy being useless and flapping around in blind distress.

 

“ _Bluh, bluh...”_ The human spider, who has saved countless lives with her enhanced strength and senses, barely manages to catch the towel from dropping to the floor as Deadpool abruptly lets her go. “That wasn’t as helpful as you probably think it was, Wade.”

 

“Yea, well,” the old man grumbles, “not even my _own_ kid was such a… such a _disaster._ Do you know what I just found in the kitchen, little miss eyesore? Absolutely _zero_ ingredients needed to make special chocolaty chip pancakes! In fact, there were hardly _any_ ingredients to make _anything at all!”_ He leans in real close, and Penny leans out real far away. “How are you even a functioning adult right now? Because I would _love_ an answer.”

 

Penny takes offense to this. She thinks she’s doing all right!

 

“Hey, I think I’m doing all right!” She throws her arms out, forgetting that her bathroom is monumentally small. She knocks a painted fish she made in middle school off of the wall. It bounces sadly on the floor.

 

Wade just sort of looks at her, the big hypocrite.

 

He adopts a falsetto tone as he walks away from the bathroom. _“...and she’ll never get a husband_ – or wife, ‘scuse me – _can you believe it, Nancy? She’s just a bird that never left the nest...”_

 

“Oh, stuff it, _mama hen_ _...”_ Penny snorts, toweling off the rest of her neck and following him out. “He comes in here just to clean my face for me, then complains about it… Unreal.”

 

“What was that?” Wade cranes his head around the half-wall separating her kitchen from her ‘bedroom’. “You wanted a noogie? Was that it? Was that what I heard? Honey, I think that’s what I heard!”

 

“No! _Nononono- ”_ Penny shrieks a little bit, dancing away from his grabby, scar-soft hands. She puts up a warning arm, as if she can ward him off with only the power of her palm or something. “My hair actually looks _okay_ this morning – you can’t mess it up! It’s practically art!”

 

It’s true – she’s having a great hair day (morning? She just kinda woke up like this...), which is saying something. Her hair is brown and textured in a boring, almost-wavy way, but it’s still pretty short and a pain to deal with. The only reason she keeps it like this is because she can’t be bothered, and also anything longer would get seriously itchy and annoying under her mask.

 

Does she care about her hair? A tentative ‘yes’ is her answer, because when she turned nineteen and was still living with Aunt May, she kept getting conditioner as her birthday presents (not-so-subtle nudges about her hygiene, no doubt), and now she’s kind of hooked on actually having soft hair.

 

Does she take the necessary steps to care for her hair? That one is a solid ‘maybe.’ Sure, she has conditioner (now. Again – highschool was a bad time), but does she own a hairbrush? Not since she’s pretty sure her neighbor down in 210 stole it when she first moved in here.

 

Except, one time Wade went and ‘visited’ with 210. Nothing of hers has gone missing since.

 

She still doesn’t know whether she should be happy, or just straight up worried.

 

Wade gives her an appraising look, fingering the scars and sores of his face as he hums exaggeratedly. “Damn, you’re right.” He slaps his knee like he’s in some backwater town in a cartoon. He even mimes spitting off into the distance. “Shoot – guess I can’t mess up your hair now! Dang tootin’. Uh, other hillbilly nonsense words. Yea.”

 

Penny laughs a little bit, secretly immensely relieved. She doesn’t have anything but hope and dumb luck on her side when it comes to styling her hair. Sure, she could use water, but the last time she did that, she was still wet by the time she got to work.

 

Mr. J wasn’t amused.

 

“Honestly, all you need is some pomade or hair wax or somethin’,” Wade continues, absently following Penny into the kitchen. “Then you’d be the cutest butch on the block!”

 

“Oh?” Penny roots around in her pantry for some pre-packaged cookies. She wasn’t kidding about wanting something chocolate this morning. “Well, first off – I’m not a lesbian, I’m bisexual, so I would be the cutest _bi_ on the block, not butch.” She pauses to think about it, chewing on the end of a cookie. “Second off – I’d be a solid futch, if anything, and you know it.”

 

Wade puts up his hands in a surrendering ‘you got me there’ pose. “My hair goo is prolly forty-something years expired, but I can dig it up from its grave and let you have a go at it?”

 

She considers it for a hot second. Imagines what it would be like to look put-together for once. Maybe she could ask what kind of lipstick MJ uses and pick that up during her next paycheque, even though her experience with lipsticks has been less than stellar in her lifetime.

 

But then she thinks about how many different things she smushes her hair up against in just one day – hats, hoods, masks, strangers (unfortunately), her pillow...

 

“Nah,” she finally answers, rubbing a little at the fringes of her hair. “I’m good just being an ‘oily gremlin’, as you put it.”

 

Penny takes a looksee at her phone – damn, she still needs to answer those texts – before promptly noticing the time.

 

“Ah,” she accidentally vocalizes. Wade vocalizes back.

 

They both stare at each other blankly for a moment.

 

Amazing.

 

“Ah,” she repeats, “I need to go to work, like, immediately.”

 

Wade throws his arms everywhere, herding her towards the door, which is the exact opposite direction she needs to be going, because her shoes are still in the bedroom. “Well, then what are we waiting for? Get along now -”

 

“Wade, Wade,” she stops him, “I kinda- I need my shoes, Wade.”

 

“Shoes are overrated,” he tells her, but lets her scamper back towards the bed anyways.

 

“Um, rocks?” She counters, shoving mismatched socks (it’s not on purpose, but she’s happy that people think otherwise) onto her feet and battling with her shoe-laces.

 

“Kick ‘em,” he replies, bullheaded.

 

Penny rolls her eyes (though towards the ground, because the last time she rolled her eyes where Wade could see it, she was ‘grounded’ for a week for ‘sassing’ him. It was just as unbelievable as it sounds, given that she was _sixteen_ at the time) and gets up, grabbing her bag and barely pausing to make sure her camera and folders are inside.

 

“Bye!” She hops up and gives him a peck on the cheek, which never stops making him reel incredulously with wide eyes, as if this casual affection hasn’t happened a thousand times before.

 

“Seeya, honey-bug!” Wade waves her off from her own doorway as she rattles down the building’s central stairs. “Don’t go meetin’ any handsome women while you’re out, now, ya’ hear! Your apartment has no food – you’re not ready for that kind of relationship with living life!”

 

Penny turns her head to chase him with a remark, except she meets the eye of her landlord, who is peeking out of his apartment.

 

They both stare at each other in stunned silence for a moment.

 

He looks like he’s heavily embarrassed for her as he slowly closes his door again.

 

She swears she can hear Wade giggle obnoxiously from atop the stairs as she hurries out of the complex, face burning.

 

.

.

.

.

 

She doesn’t make it to work.

 

Instead, she’s sidelined (somewhere between that bodega place she and Gwen used to frequent and the alley where she first met Daredevil) by her ringing phone.

 

Except this is no _ordinary_ phone. _Nay!_ It’s her _Emergency_ phone!

 

Did you see that capital E in Emergency?

 

Yea – it’s big Spidey-business time.

 

“What’s the sitch?” Penny answers the phone with. Whoever is on the other end – likely a grunt or volunteer communication agent – doesn’t necessarily groan, but her enhanced hearing absolutely cannot miss that displaced sigh.

 

“Portal trouble in upper Bronx,” they tell her shortly. “Unknown beings are being deposited at random intervals, ending up in crowded buildings and traffic. No known pattern for portal appearance, or what exactly is coming out of it – but everything seems hostile so far. We’ve got Jessica Jones, Wasp, Stature, and Iron Heart gathered, but we need more hands to contain the chaos. Hawkeye is on standby with Moon Girl.”

 

“Has anybody been sucked in yet?” Penny asks, having found a strangely convenient alley to change in. “In my experience, portals tend to do a lot of sucking while they’re here.” Please don’t ask.

 

“Not as far as we’ve seen,” they reply. “But there’s definitely something coming out. We need higher eyes and ground assault, since everybody knows portal trouble means just one big EMP wave for the next few hours -”

 

“Well ain’t it just your lucky day.” She smacks her bag up under somebody’s window ledge and webs it there. “You guys aren’t still paying me in lollipops and pizza parties, are ya’? A spider needs to eat- well, a spider needs the _money_ to eat.” A little silence. “I do enjoy candy and pizza, though,” she adds quietly.

 

Another displaced sigh. “Don’t make us regret calling you, Spider-Woman.”

 

“How many times to I have to tell you? Call me Spidey!” Spider-Woman uses her webs to fling herself up onto one of the nearby buildings, already hopping across the lower, more residential areas in order to gain some ground. “What streets are we talking?”

 

“You’ll find out when you get there.” And then they hang up.

 

Penny cringes at her phone before slipping its sleek design into her wrist pocket. “Well – I regret giving _you_ my number.”

 

They’re always so rude! It’s like they don’t want her there _all the time_ or something obviously ludicrous.

 

Somebody shouts at her for swinging too low and nearly knocking into them.

 

 _Pfft_ – imagine that!

 

Turns out that the rude person on the phone wasn’t lying about the “you’ll find out when you get there” part, because almost as soon as Spider-Woman crosses between Manhattan and Bronx, she is greeted with a sharp spike in her spidey-senses and the infallible, age-old idea called ‘dodging.’

 

And dodge she does.

 

“Whoa!” Penny cries out, tugging her bouncy webs hard in order to harmlessly sail over something that looks like it came out of a DIY Make-Your-Own-Stim-Slime video, only this one howls like a wild animal and is probably made out of that illegal stuff that’ll give you rashes.

 

“Spider-Woman!”

 

It’s Iron Heart, in all her gleaming red and gold glory. She’s hovering next to the building Penny is currently clinging to the side of.

 

“Hi!” Spidey responds, chipper, even as she can see absolute chaos out of the corner of her eye. “I see your problem, and I’m glad to say that I already have a solution!” She sticks to the building with only her feet so that her hands are free to do some ‘power moves’ like pointing. Don’t worry, kids – she learned these in a TedTalk. “This is obviously from a universe where Pinterest and Instagram turned against their users, creating a small army of DIY humans who have fallen into a radioactive vat of their own trendy undoings and what-nots -”

 

“That’s enough, honestly,” Riri tells the rambling spider in that long-suffering, but otherwise amused tone of voice. No wonder people sort of see her as the de-facto leader around these parts – it’s hard not to listen to her when she sounds like that!

 

Spider-Woman shrugs. “Can’t say I didn’t try my hand at it. So – can you give me any pointers?” She swings her arm around and around in its socket, like she’s at a ball game ready to make a pitch.

 

“Lunella is figuring out some sort of solution now,” Iron Heart tells her. “Kate’s with her, but unless she and Devil switch, her dino is out of the picture for now.”

 

Penny squiggles happily in place. Devil Dinosaur and Moon Girl are _so cool._ She’s always wondered if she could get the fourth grader’s autograph, but since she’s one of the only ‘members’ with a secret identity still intact, she (reluctantly) accepts the fact that she isn’t necessarily allowed to mingle as freely as everybody else.

 

They may not be SHIELD, but they still need to keep their secrets safe.

 

“Janet and I are on the skies, while Jones and Cassie are on the ground reducing the amount of people caught in the crossfire. I need you to join them.” Riri flies a bit farther away, probably getting ready to rocket off in order to join the infinitely tiny Wasp in sky-patrol. “Try not to expand our level of chaos!”

 

“Yea, okay, bye, good luck!” Spidey calls, ultimately unsure if Iron Heart even heard her as she swings hard and low in order to make it back down to the ground.

 

Indeed, chaos reigns. It’s spring colored and smells of hot glue gun.

 

Penny smacks her lips, tossing a fallen over cafe chalkboard sign at one of the gelatinous, screeching beings.

 

Is it just her, or has the word ‘chaos’ been used one too many times?

 

Man, she thinks as she passes by Stature, who is blowing enemies over one by one despite being, like, an inch tall – she really wishes she had a portable, mind-linked thesaurus and dictionary. That could prevent _so_ many social disgraces, it’d be unreal.

 

Despite her wandering mind, Penny can’t help but be somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of ‘enemies’ she’s gone through. Her spidey-sense is off the charts, leading to her sometimes barely dodging an attack. At some point, she’d lost sight of all her other ‘teammates’ and hadn’t even noticed it, too busy with buffeting hits away and waiting for the right moment to strike.

 

At one point, she can’t get out of the way of some kind of blobulous glue ball, retched from the throat of a collapsing enemy, because she was too busy trying not to get grabbed by these jelly monkeys’ (is that what these are? If so, they’re all very colorful and nice looking, in an ‘oh god please don’t touch me you’re gross’ kind of way) long arms.

 

Penny goes down like somebody’s carelessly spat out gum, sticking chest-first to the heated concrete with a large film of luminous blue goo sitting on top of her back as if it can pretend to be a rambunctious dog rather than what it really is, which is…

 

Um. Well. It’s _s_ _omething,_ that’s for sure.

 

Some of it drips down and seeps into her suit, and she feels like yelling as she _schlop schlop schlops_ her way out of her gooey prison, one limb yank at a time.

 

Shut up, alright? She’s less articulate when she’s being bodily consumed by jelly monkey substance!

 

The jelly monkey that hit her with its disgusting _jelly monkey esophagus gun_ releases a screechy laugh and slaps its hands together, resulting in the surrounding area being covered with even more jello. Oh joy.

 

“This is just, this is just plain awful,” Penny complains, “I’ve lost my ‘Buy one, Get one free for the homeless’ cafe sign, so now I don’t wanna touch you things. I feel like a stapler stuck inside the red, red confines of an inedible office prank.” She sloughs some goo off of her forearm. The feeling doesn’t completely vanish. “And you’re all just very unpleasant to deal with, do you know this?”

 

One of the jelly monkeys wraps its weird, amorphous monkey feet around her right leg and dissolves right before her eyes into another disgusting goo trap, eating her up all the way to her hip and decimating her current mobility range.

 

“Wonderful,” Penny deadpans, standing in the middle of the street doing nothing but being sticky while everybody else is either screaming or fighting. “Just, amazing. Nine outta ten.”

 

While she’s too busy trying to pull her leg out of the goo dump, one of the monkeys breaks a window. It results in a screeching wave of enthusiasm from the rest, and an apparent bump in opposing morale, as another dives at Wasp and doesn’t miss. The tiny flier is forced to shift back to normal form in order to not get completely swallowed for good.

 

Jessica Jones starts giving Spider-Woman the Death Gaze from several streets over. There may be buildings separating them, but she can _feel it._ Make no mistake of that. That gaze has a _physical presence._

 

She shudders.

 

“You’re all gonna blame that on me, aren’t you?” Penny asks the open air. Only howling jelly monkeys and some yelling citizens greet her.

 

“Right.” She goes off to find something else to hit these things with that doesn’t involve getting herself slimed just for funsies. She ends up with a fire hydrant. She wonders where its water hole is, looks around, sees no big mess of water, and shrugs it off to worry about later.

 

If somebody else broke it, and it wasn’t her, then it (probably) isn’t her problem, she decides as she swings the big red metal hydrant at some monkeys, splattering their entire pink and green and blue bodies all over the ground.

 

So far, Penny hasn’t had the chance to see any of the portals these things have come out of. She’s hoping with Moon Girl on the case, AKA: _the smartest girl on Earth, no joke,_ things will have already been resolved.

 

Maybe they’re just down here, cleaning up the aftermath, is what she’s hoping.

 

That hope is dashed when a great white circle blinks into existence barely a few yards from where Penny is walloping the shit out of some banana-colored jelly beings.

 

It _yawns,_ like something unfathomably large that cannot be translated between Penny’s eyes and the area she perceives holding it seamlessly in the air. The atmosphere mumbles, itching her ears and her senses until she suddenly finds herself on her knees, gasping inwards the oxygen that smells so much more of burnt rubber than usual.

 

If she’s being honest – and she might as well be, seeing as she could be _dying_ in a couple of minutes, so _what the hay_ – the portal kind of reminds her of the little jars of snail cream Gwen used to bring everywhere: gooey, stringy, strange. Giving off those ‘don’t stick your hand in here, you’ll regret it’ vibes, except ten million times worse because it’s, like, _a portal to another dimension_ and not just wrinkle care in a handy plastic package.

 

In simpler terms: _Holy_ _chicken n_ _uggets_ _what is going on!?_

 

The portal _drips_ like an oil slick, except white and sickly, and Penny can make out a few figures within that non-fluid.

 

More jelly monkeys.

 

And a… person?

 

Just as soon as it appeared, it’s gone, leaving Penny’s _everything_ suddenly distraught and bereft of the previous pressure that tried to crush her innards with no specific intensity to be identified.

 

She absently kicks a jelly monkey advancing away with one of her legs as she decides that that must’ve been one of those funny “lasted an hour? No, it was only a second” moments that you never really understand until you experience one yourself.

 

Also, there’s somebody loudly swearing and teeter-totting around with what looks like a sword in their hand, so Penny figures she better hurry up and stand. She may or may not have inadvertently found this whole she-bangs instigator, or monkey overlord, or _whatever._

 

Just as Spider-Woman has gotten to her feet, however, does her spidey-senses decide to _screech_ even louder than the loudest jelly monkey she’s encountered today.

 

A bullet races past her right side, leaving that ear with a numb ring to it.

 

She wasn’t compelled to dodge, so instead she’s frozen still, staring at the person who also fell out of the portal along with the monkeys.

 

Obviously, they’ve got a gun in their hand. Penny thinks if it was one of the monkeys that fired a gun, they’d all be a little bit more generally screwed than they were five minutes ago.

 

Penny finds it in herself (and her survival instincts) to turn her head and look at what or who was just shot at, and is rewarded with a face full of slightly charred green goo from an exploding jelly monkey.

 

So… Guns work. Guns work great.

 

“ _Whew!”_ The unidentified portal person breathes loudly, smoking gun of a gleaming, dark chrome in their hand as they audibly crack their neck in a gratuitous way. “I was wondering where all these little fuckers were poppin’ off to. Funny – this pretty much looks like the same spot!”

 

Heedless of the goo casualty, they smack one of their big red boots into the side of another monkey. It, too, bursts from the hit, though not as thoroughly as the one shot with the gun. Thankfully, these beings don’t seem to be able to re-form, despite what their jiggly origins seem to suggest.

 

“Sorry about that faceful, sweetie!” They call, actually acknowledging Penny’s existence. “But you know how it is -” another monkey shot, “just can’t keep my finger off the trigger.”

 

Spider-Woman’s hands do some sort of vague flappy thing in the other person’s direction, but thankfully they just take it as is and start shooting again.

 

Um. Alrighty then.

 

Now would be a _great_ time to alert the non-official team to the going-ons of this singular street Penny has been stuck on (literally) for the past half-hour of monkey onslaught, except there’s two big problems standing in her way, and one’s wearing a familiar shade of red.

 

1) Nobody gave her a communicator. She could jump around and yell, but everybody always tells her to calm down when she does that.

 

2) Is it just her, or is it just her?

 

That’s _totally_ Deadpool brawling with a baby-pink jelly monkey in front of her.

 

“ _Hahahah!”_ The blonde ponytail-having Deadpool laughs, pointing at one of the burst monkeys. “You guys all look like lube when you die!”

 

“Deadpool?” Penny voices, incredulous.

 

On one hand, this new ‘Pool is doing a great job of reducing the number of monkeys coming at her. She appreciates this to some degree.

 

On the other…

 

“Whaddup, sweetpea?”

 

“Deadpool?” Again? Penny turns around, spotting Deadpool – you know, _her_ Deadpool? The one that didn’t suddenly drop out of a portal and _shoot a gun at her_ _?_ – come waltzing down the street. He’s not as goo-covered as she is, but he’s got his swords out and looks like he’s trying his best to fit in with the crowd as he bathes in the jelly monkey bodies he destroys.

 

Like blood, only more party-friendly.

 

“Did they tell you I was comin’ or something?” Wade, clad in his red gear, asks her with some confusion. She concludes that he must’ve had time to stop at his own place before coming here. “They called me and said you weren’t looking too hot, and I said ‘yea she just kinda looks like that all the time, but it’s not nice to point it out -”

 

“Wow, hey -”

 

“But outta the goodness of my heart, I decided to -” He stops speaking abruptly, and goes frighteningly still for someone whose main concern should be the rapidly dwindling screeching masses surrounding him.

 

Behind her – and what the heck kinda amateur is she? Spidey-senses or nothin’, turning her back to somebody who has a _gun_ just because she’s kinda confused is a stupid move – Penny can also feel the same stillness from the uh… the ‘other Deadpool.’

 

It’s a harrowing moment before anything happens.

 

Deadpool draws his gun.

 

Penny throws her arms up, trying to step in between whatever the heck is going down. _“Wait, n-!”_

 

Twin gunshots ring out, and suddenly Deadpool is dropping to the ground, head thrown back. Blood and brain matter splatter, mixing unattractively with the ground goo.

 

Her body automatically whips around, her mind and her senses instinctively working together to try and spare her the gory trauma of seeing one of her friends get _killed,_ but instead she’s greeted with a very similar sight.

 

The ponytail Deadpool is also sprawled inelegantly in death, head broken into several pieces from a less precise, more blunt damage inducing gunshot to the cranium.

 

Penny involuntarily gags – the burnt rubber smell, which must only be what the jelly monkeys smell like, is stronger than ever, but it cannot completely mask the stench of human bodily matter. Especially not of the Deadpool kind.

 

She’s lucky that most of the jelly monkeys seem to be exterminated at this point.

 

She’s less lucky, bending over and grabbing at her knees as she fights back her rising gorge, when everybody and their cousin seems to come running over in that moment.

 

Thankfully, Moon Girl is not one of them. Both because there’s _frickin’ dead people_ lying around and also because Spidey would much rather make a better first impression than this.

 

“Holy shit,” Hawkeye begins with, super crass and unhelpful. She scrunches up her nose. “Did Deadpool just fight his stripper self and lose? Because if so, I wanted that on video.” She comes to stand by the defeated Spider-Woman. “Did you get that on video?”

 

“Katie, please!” Janet warns the sharpshooter away. Now in her normal-sized form, she delicately places a hand on Penny’s back and rubs lightly. Penny doesn’t have the heart to tell her that physical touch only makes the sensory overload even worse. “Aww… Are you okay, Spidey?”

 

Spidey waves, nonverbal. She stumbles past Stature and Iron Heart, who appear to be talking quietly to each other about the ‘mess’ spread out across this one haphazard Bronx street (amazing, how the street with Spider-Woman on it is hit the worst. Just _great_ _news_ for everybody.) Jessica Jones seems to be AWOL again, though that surprises absolutely nobody.

 

Penny collapses next to Wade’s body. He may be dead, but she’s pretty sure he would appreciate her not letting anybody carry off any of his, uh, ‘parts.’ She totally doesn’t need to sit down, though. She’s just… getting a mouse-eye’d view. Yea.

 

“We’re calling everybody,” Riri announces, face plate disengaging and leaving her expressions view-able. “Wasp told me that they dropped out of a portal – nothing but these gelatinous horrors came out before that.” She motions a hand at the other, unknown downed body. Penny is jealous of her obvious TedTalk worthy powers. “If this is… who we think it is, then we should be expecting them to wake up at some point. We should move this to The Tower. Make sure you call the Four, and I’ll wake up the two old men from their caves.” She smirks slightly. “Tony could use the excitement.”

 

While Riri calls in some people to come help clean up, and possibly to come move the bodies to The Tower (yes, that’s its name), Penny sighs and shifts uncomfortably in her goo soaked suit.

 

Everything still buzzes in her skull as she pats the air around Wade’s obliterated head. “You’ll be alright,” she tells his body. It’s all very ineffective, and Wasp is giving her those sad goo-goo eyes again. Stature seems to have joined her, but is more low-key about it.

 

Unwillingly, her eyes seek out the second body.

 

Following her unofficial teammates (and the body-removal team, which she hitches a ride with in order to not leave Wade alone with anybody) to The Tower, she remains overwhelmingly gutted and disturbed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUN FACTS:
> 
> -!!- Penny has the same strength and powers as Peter would have, but because she's slightly taller (a Peter at age 23 is usually between 5'8" and 5'10") and more waifish, her swinging dynamics are somewhat impacted.
> 
> -!!- Wanda is stacked just like Wade is, but is slightly shorter. She is steadier, with more compact muscles, and weighs more, making her stronger than her counterpart, though not as fast.


	2. young-ER lady deadpool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A gathering occurs while the two Deadpool's recover. One wakes up faster than the other. Penny gets weirder than normal vibes from her. What a mystery...

 

'Everyone' basically just means that anyone who was affected, needed, or was already here gets to gather in one to two floors of The Tower while shit goes down for the next hour or so.

 

They figured out pretty early that nobody wanted to use official meeting rooms, especially the people who can’t stand being confined to one area, or who can’t sit still for that long, or any number of other conflicting things. So, now anybody who can come on time gets to wander around in a studio apartment looking place with couches, a TV, and a kitchen.

 

A room, to some people, that is just begging to be destroyed every now and again. Because they’re all chronic hooligans.

 

Despite the eminent destruction, it’s admittedly all very homey and somewhat calming. As long as you keep an eye on the windows for when some of the more colorful people (read: Spider-Woman especially) come flying in unexpectedly.

 

Unfortunately, however, this time Penny walks in through the elevator like a normal person, having been on a lower floor where medical practices usually take place. There’s also designated holding rooms for people with extreme healing factors – people like Deadpool.

 

Well. _Deadpools._

 

God, this is weird.

 

What’s even weirder is that both Mr. Stark _and_ Mr. Rhodes are in on the party, it seems. The two older men are in their slick, custom-made wheelchairs next to a cool floaty screen with a bunch of gabble on it that Penny can’t read from this angle (though not for a lack of self-consciously attempted neck-craning.) Ms. Potts stands behind them and nods along, probably because she understands everything that’s going on. Mr. Rhodes looks half-asleep.

 

“Jim, are you getting any of this?” Mr. Stark prompts his husband.

 

“This is real boring, Tony,” Mr. Rhodes responds simply.

 

“Now, now,” Ms. Potts, their wife, tells them both. “Let’s not start any cat fights with all these guests here. You know that they would enjoy it much too much.”

 

Spidey likes Pepper because she’s quite prim and nice. They also have the same initials (kinda.) Not that Penny can ever tell her that, which is a bummer, because Penny likes saying her name over and over and over. It’s really fun.

 

Pepper Potts, Pepper Potts, Pepper Potts, Potts Pepper, Pepper Potts-

 

Somebody clears their throat, and Penny nearly leaps out of her own skin.

 

It’s Sam Wilson, AKA Falcon, AKA One Cool Dude. He’s lounging on the couches in full ‘I don’t care’ gear, which happens to be a worn out sweatshirt and some off-brand Captain America sweats, which she has no doubt that he bought unironically.

 

Apparently, he was already here before anybody showed up. He’s cool like that.

 

Or maybe he just straight up lives here.

 

“You were saying a certain somebody’s name out loud again, Web Head,” he warns her, smile quirked but not nasty. Again – he’s cool like that. “Just wanted to let you know.”

 

Penny swallows nervously. Is this a bad time for an autograph? “Thanks, Other Wilson.”

 

Other Wilson tips a mug of what smells like hot chocolate (Penny is supremely jealous and in awe of this cool person) and goes back to watching some sort of baking show, utterly ignoring any riffraff what goes on ‘round here at the moment.

 

Penny takes that breath of _faux pas_ to slink off in some other direction – one where there are less cool people liable of catching her doing something… not-cool.

 

Why does this have the flavoring of highschool?

 

She eventually decides that standing somewhere vaguely in the vicinity of Janet and America is a good idea. It’s far enough that nobody can easily begin talking to her, but also she just finds the two women to be slightly nicer and less naturally intimidating than anybody else.

 

Unwillingly, her eyes scan the room for Jessica Jones.

 

When she finds the area to be devoid of the steely-eye’d hard hitter, she accidentally sighs so loud that half the room immediately looks at her.

 

Christ! What schism of Parker Luck dogs her footsteps today; it’s unreal! Is this some kind of _nightmare?_ Are her pants going to somehow disappear within the next five seconds? Will Flash Thompson crawl out of the woodwork and laugh at her?

 

And then the _other_ half of the room turns and begins to stare.

 

“Holy cheezits, _what!?”_ She mutters heatedly to herself, perturbed and shrinking in on herself. Her shoulders brush her ears and she basically scares herself. Amazing.

 

“Bruh,” somebody says from behind her, which she _did not expect,_ “you make a better wall than a window.”

 

_Shriek._

 

Spider-Woman sheepishly slinks away from her previously ‘perfect’ position, belatedly realizing that it was so ‘perfect’ because it was _right in front of the elevators,_ and there was a _good_ _reason_ why nobody was standing there in the first place.

 

Stature gives her a funny look as she backwards-crawls her way up a wall, sitting upside down on the ceiling, way out of anybody’s way. She doesn’t know why she didn’t just do this in the first place, dammit.

 

Out of the elevator walks the woman of the hour – Deadpool-from-the-portal. Her gait says she owns the place, but the medical professional scurrying after her with a glass of water sort of ruins the strut she has going on.

 

Although, in Penny’s experience with Deadpool(s), they tend to have a very broad “fake it til you make it” attitude, even though they often look like a giant mess anyway…

 

Without thinking about it first, the spider abruptly drops to the ground on all fours in order to get a better, less upside-down look at their new arrival.

 

Deadpool’s head immediately snaps to her, and she is struck frozen halfway through standing up straight, arms still reaching towards the floor, like she got caught picking up something she shouldn’t have.

 

But the mercenary just keeps walking, giving Spider-Woman a gaze full of milky white eyes and a large tear on the front of her mask from where the bullet did damage. The minimal skin showing is just as cancer-ridden as Wade’s looks.

 

Penny doesn’t know why that’s marginally comforting. She’s going to stick it in the back pocket she doesn’t actually have in this suit and think about it later.

 

“Is this a party?” Deadpool calls out, voice scratchy and teetering on the edge of annoyingly loud. “All for little ol’ me? Shoo’, if I had known, Id’ve done something a little different with my hair.” She swings the slightly dirty and tangled bright yellow ponytail around and paws at it. It shifts oddly on her head, like it’s attached to her somewhat destroyed mask instead of her scalp.

 

Mr. Stark is still poking at the screens, and although Dr. Reed has ‘been called’ and Dr. Banner is most likely already in the building, nobody seems like they’re ready (or willing) to approach their dimension-traveling friend.

 

Penny can’t help the sigh. It’s quite familiar to their treatment of her Deadpool as well – ignore him, and hope he goes away, unless you need him for some reason, then pretend like you’re not begging him to help out.

 

Though, she reasons, watching the guy in the lab coat nervously push a glass of water into Deadpool’s hands – she’s not sure anybody is about to beg this red-suited woman to stay, anyway.

 

Deadpool _glugs_ back her provided refreshment and belches, seemingly pleased with herself as she tosses the cup to the side and wipes her mouth with the back of her gloved hand. Parts of her flaking, scarred skin tug and pull at the dry abuse, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

 

It’s such a startlingly familiar gesture and mien that Penny nearly forgets herself – this isn’t ‘her’ Deadpool, this is some _other_ dimension’s Deadpool. Earth-P95, if she heard correctly down in the holding lab.

 

“Whose dick do I gotta suck around here to find some cute girls?” Deadpool announces to the room, bright yellow ponytail whipping back and forth behind her muscular figure as she scans the area in great big, excited twists of her neck.

 

Penny, still clad in her Spider-Woman garb, can’t help but take notice of this… _predicament,_ just like every other woman there. She stands from the spidey-crouch she doesn’t remember taking, and tilts her head in curiosity.

 

She doesn’t _honestly_ think that she’ll be classified as a ‘cute girl’ by this alternate-dimension mercenary – friendship with her own universe’s red-and-black ex-merc aside. She’s just… Standing up because she’s getting ready to leave.

 

Yea. Totally.

 

“You.” Deadpool points at Spider-Woman.

 

...Hold that thought.

 

“Uhh...” Penny fumbles, poking herself first in the boob accidentally as she tries to point at her chest. She hopes nobody noticed, but there’s quite a few people staring right now (and not interfering because they’re all _drama gluttons._ Jerks.) “Me?”

 

“Yea, you’re a cute one.” Deadpool nonchalantly waltzes up to the human spider, as if the woman hadn’t knocked Penny’s entire world off-kilter in that moment. Her mind gives an excited wheeze that sounds uncomfortably like a certain ‘old man’ she hangs out with frequently. “We don’t got one of _you’s_ where I come from. What’d you say your name was again, toots?”

 

Penny almost falls right for that cliché response: ‘I didn’t, it’s [name.]’ Instead, she crosses her arms (avoids punching herself in the boob this time, which would be a level up from ‘awkward’ to ‘all-out embarrassing and warrants a bodily toss off the nearest tall building’) and looks up at Deadpool’s big white eyes and says, “You don’t have a Spider-Woman in your ‘verse? Man, that must be a sucky place to live.”

 

A bit of a stunned silence.

 

A small flare-up of her spidey-senses.

 

...Penny sort of forgot that her Deadpool, in his ‘I’m an old man and don’t got time for none of that riff-raff anymore’ mindset (even though it’s an utter and complete garbage lie), is still quite soft and lenient with her.

 

This Deadpool? Has no such guarantee on the big red tin.

 

“Yea,” Deadpool responds. Penny’s spidey-senses die down slightly, but don’t go away completely. “Yea, it does suck. So – you’re this…” She makes a vague spherical shape with her hands, “this shindig’s Spidey?” She lets out a low whistle, puckered and dry lips looking unnaturally red and swollen and angry. “Never mind – we’ve got one of them, but they sure don’t look nothin’ like you do.”

 

Penny’s interest is piqued about that. Also – who the heck calls an _entire world_ a measly ‘shindig?’ “So you _do_ have a Spider-Woman?” She wonders why Deadpool didn’t recognize her, then.

 

Costume variation is a thing.

 

Maybe, in other worlds, she’s way taller and more muscular and _striking._

 

Eh – it’s nice to think about, anyway.

 

“Nah – he’s a spry kid in a black suit.” Deadpool elaborates, itching at her elbow and looking like she’s having a right challenge of it. Penny is not envious of that thick, leather suit, but Wade has explained before that it ‘helps with the all-over scarring thing.’ “He’s new-ish. He’s everybody’s favorite little babby superhero, too. We all look out for him.”

 

“That’s...” Really freaking adorable and I’m jealous. “Nice.”

 

Deadpool smiles at her, showing teeth. “The nicest.”

 

Penny’s spidey-senses flare a little bit again, and she swallows nervously.

 

Oh yea. This Deadpool is _definitely_ different from Wade Wilson.

 

Now, if only she could put her finger on _what_ and _why_ and _how._

 

“So...” Deadpool glances loftily at her nails. Her fully covered nails. What. “I heard from the itsy-bitsy grapevine -”

 

“The what now -”

 

“- that you and my big boy counterpart,” Deadpool continues as if Penny had never spoken. Rude, “are pretty great compadres. I mean – I highly frickin’ doubt a sweet little thing like you could end up with a baby-chomping brute like him on missions or stakeouts or anything, so... Care to extrapolate on that little relationshi- _p?”_

 

Penny blinks rapidly as Deadpool pops her p-sound harshly. “Wade and I have been friends for a few years, yea...” And I have no idea why you care, please step off.

 

“Wade?” Deadpool sucks snot up her nose. She sounds confused as she draws back slightly, which is great, because she’d been slowly encroaching on Penny’s space. “...What’s uh… What’s the ‘female’ name for Wade, again?”

 

Penny opens her mouth. Closes it. Thinks about it.

 

“Did you just _forget_ your own _name?”_

 

“No.” Deadpool pulls her mask down so that it covers her face and slightly muffles her voice. “...it happens to the best of us.”

 

“No.” Penny’s hands do this little spazz thing where her body and mind aren’t quite sure what’s going on, and who she wants to slap, and who she wants to point accusingly at. She settles for steepling them in mid-air and taking a calming breath. “No, no it does not, I assure you of this.”

 

“Whadeva,” Deadpool slurs in a sigh, making that same motion that Wade does where he over-exaggerates a casual shrug that is anything but. It ticks the heck out of Penny. “So? You gonna help me out here, spidey-pie? Or am I gonna have to go ‘find myself’ emotionally with one of these other young heroic dames?”

 

In a bold move (for somebody who just popped out of a portal about three hours ago), the ponytailed merc leisurely waves a couple of fingers at the observing Stature.

 

Cassie, to her credit, appears to try very hard in keeping the shuddering and cringing to a minimum.

 

Wasp, on the other hand, giggles behind her bright yellow nails, appearing to be caught in the crossfire and enjoying it. America (who used to go to the same highschool as Penny, but the woman doesn’t know that because _secret identity_ and all), who is standing next to Janet, seems reluctantly flattered as well.

 

Penny sighs. Kinda wants to hit something, but refrains. “He’s -”

 

He’s right there.

 

Wow, _deja vu._

 

...Oh hey wait!

 

“Wade!” Resolutely ignoring the startled draw-back the Deadpool in front of her seems to do, Penny teeters between the volume of ‘shouting excitedly’ and ‘just barely reigning it in’, which she doesn’t mind, because as soon as she hops her way over to him, he’s sticking his grubby paws all over her shoulders in a half-embrace.

 

“Aww; ain’t you just _so_ happy to see me, bug,” Wade chortles self-assuredly, even as he begins to rub his neck in the same reality-doubting incredulousness as he’s always done. Penny wants to grab his indecisive hands and pin them back to his previous emotion. “Now – don’t you worry ‘bout those haters that say you embarrass yourself every time you do this in public. It’s not their fault they don’t also see me as the next messiah every time I get back up.”

 

Penny abruptly stops bouncing around and stares up at Wade’s masked face. “Literally nobody says that to me but you.”

 

Wade, with a telling hole in his mask, shrugs. “I’ve already proven my point.”

 

Spider-Woman rolls her eyes so hard it almost hurts.

 

“What was that?” Wade says, almost dangerously, from above her head.

 

Oh, snap.

 

Penny forgot that she exaggerates her eye-rolls while masked. Wade could definitely tell that she was heavily rolling her eyes at him.

 

She feels her doom approaching, and can do nothing to stop it.

 

“And what is this?” He suddenly gasps, holding up one fist and waving it around, acting childishly surprised at its mere existence. Penny’s mind grossly blanks itself in defense of what possible shenanigans are to come. “Why it’s… It’s… It’s that long lost _noogie_ I promised you this morning!”

 

Then he unleashes his ultimate power right on top of her head.

 

“ _Nooooooo!”_ Penny cries dramatically, struggling to get out of Deadpool’s headlock while his fist drills mercilessly into her poor scalp, screwing her mask up (and her hair, in a roundabout way.) _“_ _Ack!_ I’m sorry I’m sorry, dang it I said I’m sorry! _Quiiiiiiiit!_ You’re messing up my _maaaask!”_

 

Several people observing all this happen groan, whether in an amused way or an ‘I’m embarrassed to be apart of your species’ way. Some even use the windows and the elevator to start leaving.

 

Apparently, when Deadpool – the supposedly ‘worldwide feared immortal ex-mercenary’ – breaks out the dad moves, that means the party’s as good as over around here. Alternate dimensional traveler notwithstanding.

 

Despite this, Penny can’t help but grin from underneath her mask, her body and mien trapped in an excited, jittery state.

 

Wade’s told her that he’s, for whatever the reason, ‘in a better mood’ whenever he dies and comes back, and it can show sometimes.

 

She simply cannot fathom how dying could be de-stressful, though. She just imagines coming back confused and in worry of what she left behind. She suspects that Deadpool, however, has left _those_ worries behind a long, long time ago.

 

Speaking of _worries…_

 

Wanda, now in a less-full room, seems to have gone _worry_ ingly silent in the _wake_ of Wade’s a _wake_ ning.

 

She thinks about two Deadpools in a room, and is struck still with the notion that they may very well shoot each other again. Even though, she considers, that someone smart probably confiscated the new Deadpool’s weapons.

 

Any sounds of gunfire, especially nowadays, is immediately regarded as highly suspicious due to the new gun laws.

 

They – uh, you know, the current world order and stuff – tried to take away Wade’s guns once, but he was virulently against their vetting process of who could own guns (and why) in the first place, since it included a ‘mental wellness’ test to be passed. When they pressed, he threatened to go off-grid. When they pressed even further, he threatened to take Spider-Woman with him.

 

They stopped pressing.

 

Spider-Woman herself, only made aware of this through Wade’s vague complaining and figuring it all out after it’d already happened, remembered being slightly pissed. But all it took was a reminder of the ex-merc’s “I do what I do because I want to, not because you have the right to force me to” motto, and Penny had calmed down and took his side of things.

 

Besides – anybody with half a lick of sense knows that mentally ill people aren’t the problem here.

 

As she thinks this, Iron Heart (who must have slipped in while all the boring people slipped out) has to temporarily restrain Wanda for some reason Penny regrettably missed. Moon Girl, Riri’s near permanent shadow (and unofficial little sister) is taking notes a few feet away, an off-duty Falcon standing at her shoulder protectively. A small drone follows her around in the air, likely recording certain things. Her navy blue backpack has the name ‘Lunella’ cross-stitched to the back pouch.

 

Adorable.

 

“Fuck! Fuck your fucking fucks!” Wanda yells, twisting against Iron Heart’s metal suited strength to no avail.

 

Less adorable.

 

Wade’s hand is suddenly clasped onto Spidey’s shoulder as they both stand and face the spectacle, as if he’s planning on turning her around or steering her away or something equally ludicrous and unnecessary. She can even hear the telltale sound of his mouth opening and breathing loudly.

 

Glaring up at him, all Penny does is adjust her mask and shimmy her shoulder from his grasp.

 

“I’m not sixteen anymore,” she complains – and warns, in a way, “you great big transparent _lug –_ you know this is nothing I haven’t seen before, right?” It’s nothing you haven’t also been through, is what goes unsaid.

 

He shrugs semi-awkwardly, caught in the act.

 

“Honestly,” she grumbles.

 

Riri shouts in disgust about being bitten.

 

“Basically _twelve,”_ he grumbles right back.

 

Reed Richards comes flying out of the elevator, Dr. Banner on his heels.

 

Wanda yelps something about ‘riot police in the _hizz-ouuuse!’_

 

Sam tempts Lunella away from the chaos with the promise of homemade cookies in the kitchen.

 

“I feel like we should leave,” Penny tells her old companion faux-conversationally.

 

“Yea, probably,” Wade agrees, scratching at the hole in his mask. Blood wells up, but the simple skin wound is sealed seconds later despite the rough treatment. The blood stays, though. “So… You’re swinging me back to my apartment, right?”

 

Penny makes a noise of abject disgust, tromping her way over to the many paneled windows, which open politely for her. Such an intelligent tower.

 

“Since when was I your taxi? Don’t you old folk need the exercise or something?” Even so, she stands right next to the open window and waits for him to get closer.

 

“ _Hnngh,”_ Wade suddenly groans, bonelessly collapsing onto Spider-Woman, who squawks indignantly. “But _chucklebug_ – all that wanton destruction tired me out! You just don’t understand how faint hearted us ‘old folk’ can get...”

 

“You _liar,”_ she seethes, not even buckling under an extra two hundred and fifty some odd pounds. She does obnoxiously jab him in the ribs, though. “You _live_ for wanton destruction, Mister Mythbusters; you can’t fool me.”

 

Wade only giggles stupidly as Penny hoists him up onto her back like he’s her art project instead of an entire human being.

 

With a quick, easy hop, Spider-Woman is teetering in between the enclosed room and the slightly humid air of the open New York City. It would be photogenic, if only she didn’t have Deadpool clinging to her back, taking turns to see how many times he can holler in her ear or randomly let go before she snaps and tosses him into the nearest garbage bin.

 

...What? It’s happened before!

 

Yea, she doesn’t think it was her best day either…

 

Before she can take the leap and swing herself and her loud companion elsewhere, an unexpected _“Yoooohoooo! Spidey!”_ comes from behind her, startling her into missing half her jump.

 

What ends up happening is that, Wade, with less strength than her, is dealt with the halted force and goes flying out the window ahead of her with a half-surprised, half-delighted yell. Thinking quickly, she webs him with a thin line and sticks it to the bottom sill of the window.

 

He swings freely, occasionally being buffeted against the side of the tower by the wind.

 

Eh, good enough. Penny gives herself a seven out of ten for effort.

 

And then both Deadpools are talking at once, which is a real cluster fuck and Penny wishes she could plug her ears and just leave them both here, but she’s got to at least act somewhat professional, even as she tells herself she’ll bump up her score to an eight out of ten if she lines up the perfect shot to cover his big mouth with webbing.

 

(Un)fortunately, the ponytailed Deadpool is closer. Or possibly just louder.

 

“You just gonna leave me down here?” Wanda asks, her mask skewed so thoroughly that her ponytail is now sprouting from her ear instead of her nape, somewhat reaffirming Penny’s earlier hypothesis that it’s just a wig. “That’s fine – I’d leave me here too!”

 

An obnoxious chortle.

 

Riri, who currently sits on the talker, looks embarrassed for Spider-Woman. Which is just great because she doesn’t even have her face plate open, and yet the emotion translates perfectly.

 

“Um...” Penny stalls. Wade is quiet, but as she takes a glance over her shoulder (definitely not for “How To Talk To Girls” support, though, haha! Where’d you get that silly idea. She can totally do this by herself. Probably…) she spies him craning his ear up towards the open window, happily eavesdropping on this strange, strange conversation.

 

She contemplates dropping _him_ like some eaves and webbing him up farther down the building, but she’s utterly distracted when Wanda continues talking.

 

“Don’t you worry about me, though, Miss Webslinger,” Wanda continues in a sigh that’s ruined by her volume. “I’ll just be wondering what you’re doing this weekend, alone...” Iron Heart seems to squeeze her painfully in warning. She backtracks. “Well, maybe I won’t be alone… I’ll be here with all these fancy Tower people. Did you know that _I_ don’t have a ‘The Tower’ in my universe? Isn’t that so cool? Well, not really cool, it’s actually bad now that I think about what _I’ve_ got back home, _snrrk._ _”_

 

“Ah...” Penny waffles once more. What the hell is going on? “That’s um, that’s nice, Wanda. I’m- I’m gonna go now -”

 

“I’ll be here!” The pinned Deadpool shouts excitedly once more. “Hey, Spidey! Did you know that I’m gonna be here! Until I leave, that is.” Riri seems to be trying, and failing, to get her to shut up. “You should, should… _Hnng,_ don’t touch me there, seriously, I’ll fart – stop by sometime!”

 

“Cool.” Spider-Woman turns down to her Deadpool. “We are leaving immediately.”

 

Wade says “Laugh my ass off” out loud.

 

Penny squints off into the distance for a moment and deeply questions her life.

 

Despite trying to finally vacate the premises as quickly as possible, she – damn her enhanced hearing – picks up on how Riri seems to be telling Wanda off for that little performance, laying down some rules, asking “why are you harassing Spider-Woman?”, the whole nine yards that some people feel compelled to do...

 

“My city now,” Wanda replies, smug, before she gets knocked out by a great metal fist.

 

Penny shudders and sighs loudly as she launches herself into the air, dragging Deadpool behind her until her bouncy webs snap back and deposit him within prime grabbing distance.

 

They make a quick stop to re-acquire Penny’s bag from where it was stuck up under somebody’s window ledge, frightening (or maybe exciting) a small child who was watering plants in pots in the window. Soon, however, they have a swinging arrival at Wade’s apartment.

 

She steps inside briefly in order to change into her normal clothes in the hallway, but soon she has to face the music and hurry herself to work, even though Wade’s place is a little out of the way. She’d swing there, but that tends to _add_ detours rather than reduce them.

 

Ah – the life of a vigilante celebrity.

 

It lowkey sucks.

 

“You get any good pics of that fight to make the big mustache himself happy?” Wade asks as he leans on the inside of his door jamb, trying to look casual and ultimately failing because of the bullet hole in his mask.

 

“You know I didn’t,” Penny sighs. “It’s not like I have a camera strapped to my forehead everywhere I go.” Even though she _has_ tried that before; it just made things extra blurry and Mr. J extra _yell_ _-_ _y._ She’s also tried borrowing a drone from Mr. Stark, but after it got destroyed by a very persnickety Venom, she wasn’t allowed to have another (despite _obviously_ being a town favorite who deserves _everything_ she wants from old billionaires.)

 

Wade shrugs. “Ah, oh well...” Then, just as Penny’s turning away to walk down the apartment’s outdoor steps: “Hey, listen...”

 

Um…

 

Penny calculates the distance and force needed to literally leap away from this unknown conversation.

 

“About that Wanda gal,” he continues, pulling his mask off and tossing it somewhere behind him into his apartment’s hallway. “What are you planning on uh, doing about her? Just asking.”

 

Penny restrains herself, curious and confused. “What do you mean, ‘what am I gonna do about her’? Hopefully nothing is what I’m rooting for. She seemed a little...” She makes a vague wavy hand motion.

 

Is it appropriate to tell the psychotic, schizophrenic man that she ‘seemed a little crazy’?

 

She’s gonna go with a soft ‘no,’ even though she’s almost positive Wade doesn’t care about that kind of thing.

 

“She’s a little bit on the young side, for a ‘Pool” he agrees, though for seemingly a different reason. “And she seemed preeeetty _interested_ in you, too, itsy-bitsy. What’re you gonna do when she comes ‘round here again? Drop your eyes and act like ye olde fair maiden and hope she goes away?” A self-assured snort. “She probably won’t take that.”

 

Penny almost balks when Wade does that thing with his face that basically means “I know more than you, obviously.” It’s supremely irritating; just like this conversation.

 

“Why are _you_ so sure she was ‘interested’ in _me?”_ She throws back. “And that she even will try and, and _interact_ with me again? If I don’t like it, I’ll just say so! And if she keeps bothering me or anybody else, then I’ll just have to stop her, right?” So _there!_

 

The old man just sort of looks at her, scratching his neck and picking something out of his teeth simultaneously before he begins laughing and pointing at her.

 

What.

 

“ _What,”_ Penny seethes.

 

“You’re gonna catch somebody’s hands, honey. With your face!” He insists, still laughing at her.

 

Penny reels at the volume, looking around at the open windows and the streets below with smatterings of people.

 

“Listen, can we not do this out here -”

 

Deadpool clears his throat. “You’re going to pound-town sugar!” He practically shouts.

 

“Are you doing this on purpose -”

 

“You are one spaghetti noodle width away from no longer existing on this physical plane, dame!”

 

“Yes, alright – thanks for reminding me that I’m technically kinda small compared to -”

 

“And your big, new girlfriend’s not fucking around -”

 

“- we are _not_ dating – compared to _you,_ you ridiculous muscle head -”

 

Wade takes a deep breath, thus ending the current argument's rapid-fire formula. “Point. But what I’m trying to say is: be careful, chuckaboo. If she’s anything like me – and she is quite uncomfortably lots like me, is there some deep hidden complex I should know about, sweetie? – she’s not gonna take any of that wibbly shit from you.”

 

Penny, who was previously opening her mouth in preparation for retaliation (something like: “WHATEVER.” while dramatically parkouring her way to work. Trust her, it would’ve been awesome) stops and becomes very quiet in contemplation.

 

The first thing that goes through her head: what the hell is “wibbly shit”, and what does it even entail?

 

The second thing that goes through her head: damn, I have no good response to that.

 

“Buuuuuuuut,” Wade says slickly as he slides over to her, throwing an arm around her shoulder, “if you need me to put a bullet in her head -”

 

“No,” Penny immediately says.

 

“Again!” Wade adds on, giggling, because he’s a madman and he knows it.

 

“Noooooo!” Penny replies, finally living out her fantasy as she vaults her way over the stairway railing and makes it to the ground below in a few seconds flat.

 

Wade guffaws annoyingly at her back as she books it to the nearest bus stop.

 

.

.

.

.

 

It’s Sunday by the time Penny remembers to check and answer the texts on her personal phone.

 

She feels bad about ignoring her aunt for so long, who is no doubt used to this behavior by now. Still – Penny decides to send May some flowers sometime soon in apology. Not the anonymous kind, which she is also fond of, but the edible arrangement kind, because everybody loves those (right? Everybody loves those things, right? She’s not wrong about this, is she?)

 

Spider-Woman-in-civvies walks into one of Dr. Banner’s floors of The Tower sometime in the early afternoon, having been invited there by the man himself in order to go over her current hormone treatments (and how it’s giving her acne, which sucks.) She trusts him more than any of the other doctors she’s been to, even if this is a little unconventional; he really is versed in the practice.

 

And, between Penny and nobody, a little under-the-table too…

 

Bruce “I’m not the kind of doctor” Banner and Tony “stop telling everybody I’m dead” Stark are both discussing something quietly at one of the room’s many counters. Dr. Banner waves at her absently with a “just a moment” nod, but all Mr. Stark does is huff at a piece of paper and adjust his reading glasses. Like an innate response, the other man mimics the motion on his own face.

 

Ah, nature. Two old men in their semi-natural habitat, as Riri would put it. ‘Semi-’ because this floor is neither the garage nor the labs, which are alternatively named ‘the caves.’

 

Shrugging easily, Penny adjusts her shoulder bag (an adorable tote that MJ gifted to her a few years ago during a visit) and walks to the opposite side of the room, where a small alcove is tucked into the furthest corner of the room, providing ample darkness for the large screen TV that sits facing a small row of circular couches.

 

When she has to wait while here (as Penny, not Spidey), she usually likes to utilize The Tower’s numerous on demand TV services. They’re so cheap they’re nearly free, since cable TV ‘went out of style’ quite a few years ago, but she doesn’t own a TV, so she can only get her kicks in other people’s places.

 

And by ‘kicks’ she means childhood cartoons and new animated movies.

 

When she gets there, however, it appears that somebody is already watching something. There’s shoeless feet with strange red stockings propped up on the table, the owner camped out too far down behind the couch for her to readily identify them.

 

For some incomprehensible reason, they’re watching the 2020 Kim Possible Live Action Reboot, which is one of Penny’s favorite childhood shows.

 

The person on the couch hums. Something about it tickles the back of Penny’s neck, so she slows her approach and stares at what little of them she can see suspiciously.

 

She squints heavily at the red-socked feet.

 

The texture is so frickin’ familiar that she begins to wonder if she owns those socks herself – or maybe she knows somebody who does.

 

Or… Maybe they’re not socks at all...

 

“You like Kimmy Possy, too?”

 

The voice is so startling that Penny, who had been creeping forward like a… a creeper, accidentally drills the edge of the couch into her abdomen, causing her to fall forward with a muted clatter. Some of the stuff from her bag falls out too, but she can’t find it in herself to be concerned about that yet.

 

“I’m more of a Ron-Stop-That kind of gal, though, you know?” Wanda Wilson continues, not even glancing over at Penny, who is staring dumbly up from her four-legged position on the floor. “Though I’m pretty sure I’m an even bigger fan of original _animated_ series. None of this real people crap, with real faked emotions. _Blegh.”_

 

A strangled noise comes from Penny’s stupid mouth before she figures out that she can close it manually. Her next set of steps is to fumble around on the floor for the stuff that spilled out (contact lens case, glasses case, non-incriminating phone, oh so _that’s_ where her sugarplum lip balm went…) without taking her eyes off of Wanda, who is scrunched up on the couch picking at dirty nails.

 

With a nervous hand flutter, she accidentally smacks her lip balm so hard that it goes flying neatly into one of the vents on the ground, never to be seen again.

 

Penny’s shoulder slump as she briefly gazes after it.

 

So much for not-dry lips…

 

She stands up cautiously, as if the couch will rear up and attack her next. Or maybe its sole occupant will.

 

However, the (newly) infamous Deadpool only scratches at her bald head. She is sans her red-and-black suit, instead appearing to be palling around The Tower in just a pair of black leggings and a small tank top that leaves… absolutely nothing to the imagination, holy crap.

 

Does Wanda have a six-pack? Penny squints accusingly.

 

If that’s a six-pack she’s staring at right now, she’s gonna be so pissed.

 

_Why does everybody have a six-pack but her!?_

 

“Life is so unfair...” Penny mumbles into the air, glaring down at Wanda for seemingly no reason to the average passerby.

 

But there _is_ a reason.

 

A very _good_ reason, in fact.

 

It’s called ‘I’m Jealous But You Will Never See Me Within Fifty Yards Of A Gym.” On sale now, get it while supplies last.

 

Also, the dimension-hopping merc’s bra is showing, and it’s a very strange one. Not only because she has an _ample bosom,_ so to speak, but because it looks… Weird, rubbery, and shiny, but also like somebody sewed it together with bright red cinnamon dental floss.

 

Penny awkwardly shifts around in her own bralette, resisting the compulsive urge to stick her hands down her blue long sleeve shirt to tug it up.

 

On the forgotten TV screen, Kim Possible does some really cool flips and shoots a grappling hook.

 

“Grappling hooks don’t even work like that,” Wanda suddenly pipes up with, still not really looking at Penny. “She’d pull her arm right out of her socket doin’ that. This is just disgraceful, is what it is.”

 

Penny’s energy levels at this point in time only allow her to glance over at her strange TV-watching companion in silence.

 

“I have a good point and I know it,” Wanda defends as she actually turns her face towards Penny this time. In her eyes is what can only be described as something akin to ‘reluctance.’ Like she’s purposefully avoiding looking at the other woman for some reason. “Don’t go staring at me like that, doe eyes. Hey, I think your green muffin man wants something.”

 

“Uh...” Penny gets out intelligently, having a hard time tearing her eyes away from Wanda’s as she forcefully turns her body in the direction of where the counters are. Eventually, her head has to turn with her, right?

 

The result is a very strained twist that probably looks awkward as hell. Sure feels like it.

 

Dr. Banner is standing next to the elevator while Mr. Stark wheels into the carriage. Strangely, the ‘green muffin man’ looks at Wanda briefly before looking at Penny, holding up five fingers and a thumbs down to signify “we are going five floors down.”

 

Confused, Penny nods in acknowledgment, then watches Dr. Banner leave without her.

 

...Was that supposed to happen? Usually they take the elevator together, and she knows that more than two people can fit in those when Mr. Stark or someone else in a wheelchair is also inside at the same time.

 

No doubt making a stupid, gaping face at all this, Penny feels compelled to turn back around, only to catch Wanda in the middle of hastily hiding something and flinging her torso back towards the screen.

 

Maybe… to act like they’d been watching the TV the whole time, instead of, say, making faces or hand motions at Dr. Banner while Penny’s back was turned?

 

Spidey-in-civvies can’t tell if that’s a far fetched theory or not, so she gives up and dumbly walks over to the elevator, pressing the ‘down’ button and waiting for the carriage to arrive.

 

She then begins to sweat nervously when Wanda vaults over the back of the couch and follows her.

 

Wishing that she could tell Wanda “go back and turn off the TV you heathen, you disgrace, you criminal, how dare you, think of the children or environment or something, shame shame shame” and then force the elevator doors open and just _climb_ her way down (she’s done it before, although that incident involved a lot more red spandex than she can spare right now) in order to avoid all of this, but the TV’s here are quite literally _smart,_ and turn off on their own if no one is watching.

 

So here she is, having to endure a long (probably short, but you know how these dramatic moments are) wait for the elevator with Wanda breathing two damp holes onto the back of Penny’s neck.

 

She feels like she needs a towel or something.

 

Rather than strike up some sort of conversation (“Hey, what’s up?”, “Nothin’, just being a major creep who is going to ruin your day just by existing because I’m so terrible.”, “Oh, cool.”, “Chimichangas.”) the two women stand in silence and listen to the building make vague robotic creaking noises.

 

The elevator chimes softly, doors swishing open.

 

Penny walks in, because she’s a normal human being. To her disappointment, so does Wanda. In a ‘normal human’ fashion, that is.

 

The doors close while she is staring heavily at the wobbly reflection of herself in the metallic walls, surprise in her features.

 

Why is she disappointed that this new Deadpool isn’t acting rambunctious and unreasonable? Is it because those were the characteristics of the only interactions she’d had with Wanda so far? Is she just unconsciously upset that her initial perceptions have been led astray?

 

In the small moment that Penny finds herself stuck in her own mind, Wanda reaches over and selects five floors down exactly, solidifying her ‘far fetched’ theory that the doppelganger was watching her silent conversation with Dr. Banner earlier.

 

Penny would glare, righteously burdened by this revelation, but she can’t find it in herself to make a big deal like that.

 

If she was Spidey, she might’ve; but she’s Penny Parker right now, and she knows that Penny Parker doesn’t make mean eyes at people just because she jumps to conclusions (or is proven _totally absolutely right,_ like right now.)

 

Penny Parker only glares at other people’s boobs in life, apparently.

 

She feels like smacking her forehead.

 

Instead, she steadfastly ignores how she can see Wanda scratching at their nose out of the corner of her eye, treading dangerously close to nose-picking territory.

 

It’s slow-going, in the elevator. All Penny can hear is the faint noises of the machinery working, someone talking very loudly on the second floor they pass (hello, enhanced senses), and Wanda breathing as heavily as they always seem to.

 

Right as Penny decides that a slight sigh of despair won’t be seen as amiss, Wanda decides to speak again, causing her to choke on her innocent breath.

 

“Your Stark is a lot nicer than mine,” Wanda starts off with, “and a lot more disabled, too. Any idea how I can replicate that?”

 

Penny, used to Wade’s off-color comments, automatically gives the second merc disappointed eyebrows. Still, her mouth takes the idea and runs the heck away with it, all thoughts of an awkward elevator ride temporarily pushed to the wayside.

 

“Oh, I’m sure you have plenty of ideas,” is her response, eyebrows quirking as she peeks sideways. Even though she’s pretty positive any Tony Stark that is also Iron Man would be chronically ill anyways…

 

Wait, was Deadpool talking about the ‘nice’ part or the ‘disabled’ part?

 

Wanda smirks. It’s a fantastically lopsided, yet predatory thing. “You think?” If she had a gun currently, she’d be twirling it. “What gave it away?” She rolls her shoulders, something that seems like a massive endeavor. “My dashing good looks?”

 

Penny, coming back to herself and her situation, gives a nervous little laugh as her eyes accidentally linger on the merc’s eyes, shoulders, and _uhh_ chest.

 

Crikey.

 

Initiate _‘Abort Mission’_ mode if you want to live.

 

She’s startled into further motionlessness when the elevator chimes, and the doors open once more. She stares blankly forward, half-blinking as she sluggishly notices Dr. Banner is waiting for her.

 

“Hey, Brucey,” Wanda speaks up before Penny has the chance to even remember what brain function it takes to move a foot forward. “I’m just here to deliver you this lovely flower, then I’m gonna go beat something up downstairs like the true, emotionally repressed degenerate I signed up to be. Alright with you, doc?”

 

A hand is pushing at the small of her back and she takes a few complacent steps forward before she skittishly dodges forward and to the side, no longer in front of the elevator.

 

Flower? Lovely flower?

 

What?

 

There’s no flower?

 

Wanda has no flowers in her hands?

 

Because those hands were on her _back?_

 

(Those hands that were probably just recently stuck up their human’s nose!?)

 

Penny turns her head back and stares owlishly at the flower-less liar.

 

She opens her mouth to say something articulate, but all she can do is breath out a bit before failing to close her mouth all of the way.

 

Dr. Banner gives her a concerned look, but evidently waves Deadpool off with a significant eyebrow motion that probably means “don’t do anything stupid, and we won’t have a problem.”

 

That or “don’t call me Brucey and/or doc ever again.”

 

You never can really tell with this guy and his eyebrows.

 

Before she knows it, Wanda is winking in a flash of a second, the elevator doors are closing, and the merc is gone.

 

It all leaves Penny feeling very bereft and unbalanced. Betrayed, almost. She can’t quite puzzle out why, but she’s pretty sure if she had been Spidey during any part of that interaction, Wanda would be half-dead and buried in a brick wall somewhere, courtesy of a patented Spidey Kick.

 

Which also leaves her reeling – why is her innate response to Wanda’s… ‘attentions’, violence?

 

She doesn’t vehemently _hate_ the scarred woman or anything, nor does she hate interacting with her (so far…), as awkward and stilted and _confusing_ as those interactions may be.

 

Why is this ‘if I was Spider-Woman right now, thing would be different’ so haunting and appealing to her?

 

“Miss Parker?” Dr. Banner finally says, in a soft tone that he always seems to adopt. He appears to be blinking and peering at her with concern once again. “Is everything alright? You seem a little...”

 

Penny, a little bit breathless, thoughtless, and all-around ‘Pool-less (haha) assures him that she’s fine, she was just a little bit startled by the ‘new guest.’

 

Dr. Banner, still taking her for a non-affiliated citizen (with some _wack_ body issues that she chalks up to her DSD), gives her a knowing half-smile, and tells her that Wanda is “quite the character, but means you no harm.”

 

Penny wants to laugh. She doesn’t; that’d be rude.

 

Dr. Banner adjusts his glasses and begins the appointment.

 

Leaving The Tower, Spider-Woman-in-civvies can’t help the line of thought that tries to convince her of her earlier assumption – that she isn’t really a ‘cute girl’ to Wanda or anything like that. She’s just an easy target, maybe. Someone who fumbles easily and doesn’t immediately go running to the hills to get away from the ‘crazy’ dimensional traveler who’s apparently decades younger and significantly different from their own ‘crazy’ Deadpool here.

 

Sighing on the subway and avoiding a woman voraciously eating a subway sandwich (haha – irony), Penny tries to both convince herself that she’s not disappointed in her own conclusions while also telling herself that she would’ve never been disappointed anyway, because she wasn’t excited or expecting of genuine interest from _Wanda Wilson_ of all people in the first place.

 

Because who would want any of _that_ from somebody like Deadpool?

 

Right? Right!?

 

Now she just feels like a sad hypocrite, and sends up a mental apology to Wade in her head. She’s sure that he’s a wonderful person while dating… probably.

 

She wants to kick something, but refrains. The sub’ is already rattling around enough without her super-strength adding to the mix.

 

*

 

Going home for the day, something narrowly escapes Penny’s mental grasp.

 

The idea that, had she truthfully just been some hapless citizen with unidentifiable relations to Dr. Banner within The Tower, then she shouldn’t have had any knowledge that Wanda was a ‘dimension hopper.’

 

So wrapped up in her Wanda Craze (it’s an apt name), she forgot to act surprised at the allusion of two different universe’s of Tony Stark’s being disabled or not.

 

She goes to bed that night without having ever thought of it.

 

What a wonderful mistake.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUN FACTS:
> 
> -!!- Penny met Wade only a short time after her Uncle Ben died and when she picked up the Spider-Woman name. She almost straight-up hated him until he brought her down from a panic attack after a close encounter with a gun. Because of that, she begrudgingly spent time with him. They eventually became good friends!
> 
> -!!- In this universe, the Avengers and SHIELD aren't really things anymore. Most mutants, mutates, inhumans, and other super-powered beings gather together in cities and form their own working, problem-solving, and collaborative communities. The government has been strong-armed into taking a hands-off approach after one too many mishaps with mutant discrimination. It has the downside of being disorganized.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Profiles, Year 2029 (use in case of Dimensional Confusion):**  
>  Wanda Winona Wilson - Earth-P95: Age 33, 6'3", pan demi-woman. Has a hard time finding bras in her size, so she makes her own. They all look shitty.
> 
> Penelope Mary Parker - Earth-437: Age 23, 5'11", bi transgender woman, intersex. Has modified hormone treatments from Bruce Banner, but gets a lot of temperamental acne for it. Likes to send her aunt 'anonymous' flower arrangements.
> 
> Wade Winston Wilson - Earth-437 (?): Age 68, 6'6", genderfluid; effectively immortal. Has a self-proclaimed "old man" crush on Wolverine. If you ask him, he says he has two daughters, one being Ellie (age 31, mutant, living in Chicago), but he never says who the other daughter is.


End file.
